


Allegory

by oliviacirce



Category: Revenger's Tragedy - All Media Types, Revengers Tragedy
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:Thuvia Ptarth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:47:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliviacirce/pseuds/oliviacirce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lust, vengeance, and just a touch of rhetoric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Allegory

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea what crack I was on when I wrote this, but it was probably Jacobean revenge crack. Thanks to Molly and Joe for last-minute beta-reading, Molly for talking me into it, and my family for their yuletide-related patience. Warnings for blood, death, sex, violence, and, um, canonical necrophilia. This is movie-based, but also strongly influenced by the play.

"You are merry, my lord," Vindici says, and smiles: always obedient, always obsequious.

Lussurioso is sprawled on his decadent bed, a glass in one hand and a girl on either side. He is laughing, bright-eyed and half-naked and very, very drunk. Vindici does not look at the girls. "I am _very_ merry," Lussurioso agrees. "You should join us, friend. Plenty to go around." Lussurioso is generous in his cups and more generous in his bed.

"Better not, my lord," Vindici shakes his head, feigning regret. "You wouldn't want me to get distracted from the mission." In truth -- and Vindici prefers, wherever possible, to stick to something like the truth -- he is never distracted from the mission, because the mission, his mission, is all that matters.

"Oh yes." Lussurioso drains his glass and Vindici watches his throat. Strangling holds a certain appeal, but it is nothing to the harsh, hot pleasure of a knife. "Oh yes, the girl." One of the girls on the bed trails a hand down Lussurioso's chest and into his leather trousers, "No, I wouldn't want you to forget the girl. She is so very lovely."

Vindici clasps his hands behind his back, and does not imagine Castiza in Lussurioso's bed. "Indeed she is, my lord."

"You are a faithful servant," Lussurioso says, pleased, and Vindici bows. "Although I applaud your dedication, it is too late to pursue the girl this night. You may remain." The second girl is unfastening his trousers, now, but his eyes are fixed on Vindici.

Vindici bows, again, and watches, and waits.

\-----

Gloriana, Vindici discovers when he asks her, is not impressed by Lussurioso. _Just like his father_ , she hisses, baring her teeth in a death's head grimace. _Lust and ambition and death._

"Don't you like death?" Vindici asks.

Gloriana's laugh echoes through the catacombs like the wind before a storm. _It isn't as peaceful as I imagined._

Vindici strokes her hair and kisses her high white forehead, "I'll bring you peace, my love. He's the means to my ends. Carlo -- you remember Carlo? -- my brother says he is the way to the Duke."

 _Hmm_ , Gloriana says, and the stones rumble, _but you can't have love and blood without the rhetoric, and vengeance is not justice._

"I'm doing this for you," Vindici snaps, nettled.

Gloriana laughs, again, this time like a peel of thunder. _Fate spoke_. There's another crack, and the catacombs are flooded, for a moment, with light. _A storm is coming_ , Gloriana says, and then she is silent, and no prompting from Vindici can make her speak again.

\-----

Vindici almost leaves Lussurioso in prison. He looks good there, behind bars; but prison is, after all, only a temporary solution, and Vindici still requires his patron.

In the rain, the scars on Lussurioso's cheek glisten, dull and white, and Vindici longs for a razor, a knife, a sliver of broken glass. "Your cheek, my lord," he says, and stops, unexpectedly uncertain.

Lussurioso laughs, "Pain is beauty."

Vindici frowns, "Isn't that --" But no, beauty is nothing but a construct, here: blood and death are beautiful, and lust is greater than love. "I can find you a razor."

"Hmm," Lussurioso says thoughtfully, and then he smiles, still bright with unexpected freedom. "No, I think I will wait until I have seen to my brothers. There is too much pleasure in both pain and beauty." He lays a hand on Vindici's arm, almost a caress. "But thank you, friend."

\-----

It rains and rains and rains, and Carlo frowns and mutters and consults the augurs. "It must mean something," he says, eyes fixed worriedly on the television screens.

"Tracks are easier to cover in the rain," Vindici observes, but Carlo is still frowning. "It means nothing, brother," he adds, at last, lightly. "Rain is nothing but rain."

"I don't --" Carlo begins, and then stops. "What if --"

Vindici shakes his head. "Shh, brother. We need not doubt." Vindici has never doubted this. This is simple, written into him, written with his blood and his life and his broken heart, the sum of his parts.

"A storm is coming," Carlo says, and Vindici smiles, because the storm is him.

\-----

Lussurioso is drunk again, but not as drunk as he seems. "When I am Duke," he breaths in a cloud of smoke, the end of his cigarette glowing ember-red, "I will have them all. Every one of them, pretty girls and pretty boys." He smiles, sharks' teeth in the dark night.

"Forgive me, my lord," Vindici says, "but can't you have them all, already?" Lussurioso's eyes narrow, and Vindici adds, just a little too hastily, "You are great enough -- not to mention handsome enough, my lord -- to command wherever you adore. Do they not fall at your feet already? You _will_ be Duke."

"I'm not Duke yet," Lussurioso snaps, "and they can still evade me. Just look at that girl," he snaps his fingers, "What's her name -- the _girl_ \--"

Vindici takes a steadying breath. "Castiza, my lord."

Lussurioso's lip curls, " _Chastity_." He lights another cigarette from the ashes of the first. "When I am Duke, chastity will be outlawed. The people must change with the times, and in our modern age dedication to such outdated values is nothing but a crime." His lips are red, and his loose sprawl in the wide leather chair is nothing but tightly coiled sex, ready to spring.

"What would you have the people worship, instead?" Vindici sips his whiskey.

"Lust," Lussurioso says, and leans forward to take the glass out of Vindici's hand.

\-----

"I don't really remember Gloriana," Castiza says, stroking one delicate hand down the silken fibers of her red wig. "I just remember that she was beautiful."

"She was," Vindici smiles at his sister, "She is."

Castiza frowns at Gloriana's poisoned lips. "Don't you think she'd mind? Being a murder weapon, I mean? Even if -- he was evil, evil incarnate, the Duke," she spits, "but haven't we disturbed poor Gloriana's peace?"

"We've _brought_ her peace." Vindici pulls Castiza into a one-armed hug. "We've bought it with revenge."

 _Vengeance_ , Gloriana whispers, her voice dark with the remnants of poison and death, the only kisses from the Duke she would accept.

"Revenge," Castiza repeats slowly, and then she smiles, dark and complicated and utterly familiar. "I like that. It suits you -- it suits us."

Vindici kisses her forehead. "That's my sister."

\-----

Lussurioso, three cuts on his cheek and a crown on his head, is everything Vindici hates and everything he desires. There is no love in this place since Gloriana died, but lust is harder to ignore, and Vindici is nothing but desires, in the end: sex and blood and death and utter, final, terrible destruction.

"A masque, my lord," he tells Lussurioso, grazing the veins in Lussurioso's arm with his fingernails, "A celebration, of your fortuitous ascension."

"Can you draw blood like that?" Lussurioso asks curiously. Vindici wonders. "No matter," Lussurioso says at last. "My fortuitous ascension, you said?"

"Yes, my lord." Vindici slides one hand under Lussurioso's tunic and finds his heart. It's beating just a little too fast, and Vindici would like to pluck it out of his chest and squeeze. "Fortuitous indeed."

Lussurioso taps one finger against his lip, "And the girl will be there?" He shifts forward, trapping Vindici against the pillows. Vindici arches up against him and digs his nails into the soft skin of Lussurioso's wrist.

"She'll be the main attraction," he says, with a silent prayer to Castiza and her knives.

"Excellent," Lussurioso breathes, and leans down. Vindici bites his lip until he tastes Lussurioso's blood on his tongue.

\-----

"Are you ready for the storm?" Castiza asks. It's raining again outside, but inside the Duke's palace everything is dry and gaudy, red and bright. Soon it will be darker, and redder, and wet.

"I'm ready," Carlo nods, fingering his gun, "Brother?"

Vindici grins, his teeth like a skull, and Lussurioso comes into the room. He is trailed by brothers and toadies and ministers, and his eyes catch Vindici, and then Castiza. "I have always been ready," Vindici says. His dagger is heavy and perfect in his hand.

  



End file.
